Monday, March 6, 2017

Rulers, Curves and Roomba

When showing you pictures of our new flooring, I forgot to tell you about my new hobby. Cleaning with Roomba!

With 3 dogs and 2 cats, the fur around this place can build up fast, so I run Roomba every morning and only have to clean it out once or twice while it's making its rounds. It isn't very tall and so fits under baseboards and even our TV console. We have secured wires and cables so it isn't bothered by those and manages to back itself out of any other thing that might entangle it. I pick up the dog toys but that's about all I do to prepare the way. The animals don't seem particularly bothered by it...much less than the regular vacuum anyway. My back is also much happier than when I had to push the vacuum cleaner :-) It leaves more time to sew ...which I have finally been able to get back to!

So I sewed up all those Mystery Wheel blocks and then pondered how to quilt it. I have a pattern by Sew Kind of Wonderful that is similar and saw some design ideas on the pattern cover. This quilt is too small for a lap quilt. It is meant to be a wall hanging. Since I was practicing with the curved piecing I decided to continue on and practice with some quilting using my curved rulers from The Quilted Pineapple. A wall hanging could handle the stiffness that comes with quilting something to death ;-) so I gave it a go.

Marianne decided to help. But this process was already challenging enough. The curved seams were clipped at the halfway point and pressed in opposite direction. So stitching in the ditch of the curves was even more challenging than usual...which is already requiring some skills on a longarm. I unsewed some of it and left some of the wonky lines when I realized that if you are putting tons of thread on the quilt, the wonky lines are less noticeable.

I got over being fearful of using the blue disappearing ink pens...haven't really trusted them to disappear! And learned a bit about design congruency, etc.

Linda's curved rulers are wonderful! I used them for marking and for guiding the foot along. They have lines for placement and you can use either side of the ruler for both. They also seem stable on the fabric, not slipping as I quilted along.

Your quilt is wonderful with very pretty colours. Thank you for showing your quilting with the curved ruler. I am always curious about these rulers...so many out there. I would love to quilt like that with curves. Good for you!